Mental workload is commonly defined as the proportion of a person's total mental capacity in use at a given moment. A measure of mental workload would have utility in a number of rehabilitation medicine applications, but no method has been adequately examined for these purposes. A candidate measure is the intersaccadic interval (ISI), which is the duration between two successive saccades. Previous studies indicate that ISI length may be linked to mental workload, but this link is poorly understood for tasks that are not primarily visual. Therefore, the current study was an investigation of ISI and workload intensity in three non-visual tasks: mental arithmetic, verbal fluency, and audio perception. Workload was manipulated through changes in task difficulty as well as study participant motivation level. An analysis of eye movements and other experimental workload measures indicated a significant association between audio perceptual workload and ISI length.

Mental workload is commonly defined as the proportion of a person's total mental capacity in use at a given moment. A measure of mental workload would have utility in a number of rehabilitation medicine applications, but no method has been adequately examined for these purposes. A candidate measure is the intersaccadic interval (ISI), which is the duration between two successive saccades. Previous studies indicate that ISI length may be linked to mental workload, but this link is poorly understood for tasks that are not primarily visual. Therefore, the current study was an investigation of ISI and workload intensity in three non-visual tasks: mental arithmetic, verbal fluency, and audio perception. Workload was manipulated through changes in task difficulty as well as study participant motivation level. An analysis of eye movements and other experimental workload measures indicated a significant association between audio perceptual workload and ISI length.

The concept of Goal Orientations (GOs), which was initially developed in the area of educational psychology, is becoming more and more popular in organisational psychology. Although research on GOs has come a long way since the 1970s there are still a number of conceptual and operational issues which have yet to be addressed. These include issues with the definition, dimensionality, stability and specificity of GOs. It is considered essential to address these concerns because they greatly influence the reliability, validity and accuracy of GO research. Consequently, one aim of this study was to examine the dimensionality, stability and specificity of GOs. It is believed that once enough evidence regarding these issues is gathered this could be used to develop a comprehensive definition of GOs. This study aims to contribute towards gathering such evidence. GOs have been examined both in terms of profiles as well as in terms of individual GO scales (non-profile perspective) in the past. This study uses both perspectives in order to attempt to provide as much information as possible regarding the issues being investigated. Another aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between GOs and performance, mental effort and self-efficacy. Further knowledge of these relationships is considered to be of benefit to organisations. So as to achieve these aims a longitudinal study, consisting of a survey and an experimental study, was carried out. The survey sample consisted of 641 participants whilst the experimental sample was made up of 73 participants. The participants were mainly Loughborough University students. However, there were also a number of employed and retired individuals participating in the study. Quantitative analysis was deemed to be the most appropriate method of analysis to achieve the aims of this study. Data analyses were carried out using SPSS and Latent Gold software packages. The results point towards GOs not being as general and stable as initially assumed. There is a strong possibility of GOs being domain-specific. Consistent with a number of past studies, the approach GOs were found to be more strongly related to self-efficacy, mental effort and performance on tasks than the avoidance GOs. Moreover, the relationships between GOs and these variables seem to be moderated by task characteristics. The profile analyses results revealed that a number of GO profiles obtained in this study were very similar to those obtained in other studies. A closer look at these common GO profiles indicated that some profiles were consistently more strongly related to self-efficacy, mental effort and performance than others. This study provides a foundation for future research studies to build on in order to better understand the nature of GOs and their relationships with self-efficacy, mental effort and performance.

As the amount of information captured about users increased over the last decade, interest in personalized user interfaces has surged in the HCI and IS communities. Personalization is an effective means for accommodating for differences between individuals. The fundamental idea behind personalization rests on the notion that if a system can gather useful information about the user, generate a relevant user model and apply it appropriately, it would be possible to adapt the behavior of a system and its interface to the user at the individual level. Personal-ization of a user interface features can enhance usability. With recent technological advances, personalization can be achieved automatically and unobtrusively. A user interface can deploy a NeuroIS technology such as eye-tracking that learns from the user's visual behavior to provide users an experience most unique to them. The advantage of eye-tracking technology is that subjects cannot consciously manipulate their responses since they are not readily subject to manipulation. The objective of this dissertation is to develop a theoretical framework for user personalization during reading comprehension tasks based on two machine learning (ML) models. The proposed ML-based profiling process consists of user's age characterization and user's cognitive load detection, while the user reads text. To this end, detection of cognitive load through eye-movement features was investigated during different cognitive tasks (see Chapters 3, 4 and 6) with different task conditions. Furthermore, in separate studies (see Chapters 5 and 6) the relationship between user's eye-movements and their age population (e.g., younger and older generations) were carried out during a reading comprehension task. A Tobii X300 eye tracking device was used to record the eye movement data for all studies. Eye-movement data was acquired via Tobii eye tracking software, and then preprocessed and analyzed in R for the aforementioned studies. Machine learning techniques were used to build predictive models. The aggregated results of the studies indicate that machine learning accompanied with a NeuroIS tool like eye-tracking, can be used to model user characteristics like age and user mental states like cognitive load, automatically and implicitly with accuracy above chance (range of 70-92%). The results of this dissertation can be used in a more general framework to adaptively modify content to better serve the users mental and age needs. Text simplification and modification techniques might be developed to be used in various scenarios.

Syftet med studien var att undersöka sambandet mellan arbetsminneskapacitet och mental ansträngning respektive prestation (poäng och tid det tar att utföra uppgiften) vid utförandet av en fotbollsrelaterad uppgift utförd både med och utan distraktion. Totalt deltog 22 deltagare varav 11 kvinnor och 11 män. Alla deltagare var aktiva fotbollsspelare. Studien genomfördes i form av ett experiment med två delar. Den första delen bestod av att deltagarna skulle dribbla mellan fem koner för att sedan slå en passning på 16,5 meter in i ett litet mål sju gånger för att sedan mäta mental ansträngning genom Rating Scale Mental Effort (RSME). Deltagarna gjorde även detta sju gånger med en distraktion i form av att räkna baklänges från 300 med trehopp (300, 297, 294 och så vidare) och därefter mättes deltagarnas mentala ansträngning igen. Experimentets andra del bestod av att deltagarna fick genomföra ett test med digit span forward och digit span backward för att mäta deras arbetsminneskapacitet. Det förekom inget signifikant samband mellan arbetsminneskapacitet, poäng, tid för utförandet av fotbollsuppgiften och mental ansträngning med och utan distraktionen. Det framkom dock en signifikant skillnad i mental ansträngning med och utan distraktion, men ingen signifikant skillnad i vare sig poäng eller tid med och utan distraktion. Resultatet visar på att irrelevanta tankar (i from av en räkneuppgift) går att kompensera för via en högre mental ansträngning och därför kan idrottaren ha en fortsatt bra kvalité på prestationen. Dock tyder resultaten på att arbetsminneskapaciteten inte är relaterat till hur idrottarens prestation påverkas av distraktionen. / The aim of the study was to investigate the association between working memory capacity and mental effort and performance (points and time it takes to complete the football task) when executing a football related task performed with and without a distraction. A total of 22 participants participated in the study, 11 women and 11 men. All participants were active football players. The study used an experimental design consisting of two parts. The first part consisted of a football task where the participants had to dribble a ball between five cones and then pass the ball, at a distance of 16,5 meters, into a small goal seven times and afterwards mental effort was measured with Rating Scale Mental Effort (RSME); the participants also had to do this seven times with a distraction and then mental effort was measured once again. The distraction was that they had to count from 300 backwards with three steps (300, 297, 294 and so on). The second part of the experiment consisted of measuring the participants working memory capacity using digit span forward and digit span backward tests. The result showed no significant association between working memory capacity and points, time, or mental effort with and without distraction. However, the result showed a significant difference in mental effort with and without distraction, but no significant difference in time or points with and without distraction. The results show that the athlete can compensate for irrelevant thoughts (in the form of a counting task) by using a higher mental effort and therefore maintain a good quality in the athletic performance. The results also indicate that working memory capacity is not related to how the athlete's performance is affected by the distraction.

No description available.

This study sought to explore if a relationship exists between cognitive load and student satisfaction with learning online. The study separates academic performance (a.k.a., 'learning') from cognitive load and satisfaction to better distinguish influences on cognition (from cognitive load) and motivation (from satisfaction). Considerations that remain critical to the field of instructional design, as they apply to learning online, were described and used to guide a review of the literature to find directions to fulfill the goal of this study. A survey was conducted and 1,401 students responded to an instrument that contained 24 items. Multiple analysis techniques found a positive, moderate, and significant (p > .01) correlation between cognitive load and satisfaction. Most importantly, the results found that approximately 25% of the variance in student satisfaction with learning online can be explained by cognitive load. New constructs emerged from a Principal Components Analysis that suggest a refined view of student perspectives and potential improvement to guide instructional design. Further, a correlation, even a moderate one, has not previously been found between cognitive load and satisfaction. The significance of this finding presents new opportunities to study and improve online instruction. Multiple opportunities for future research are briefly discussed and guidelines for developing online course designs using interpretations of the emerged factors are made.

<p>Glavni cilj ove disertacije bio je da&nbsp;se ispita u kojoj meri će nastavni&nbsp;pristup zasnovan na interkorelaciji&nbsp;makroskopskog, submikroskopskog&nbsp;i simboličkog nivoa &nbsp;reprezentacije&nbsp;znanja uticati na performanse&nbsp;učenika u oblasti neorganskih&nbsp;reakcija, a takođe i kakav će biti&nbsp;njen uticaj na samoprocenu&nbsp;uloženog mentalnog napora.&nbsp;</p><p>Ukupan uzorak ovog istraživanja&nbsp;sačinjavalo je 313 učenika iz dve&nbsp;gimnazije, a &nbsp;istraživanje je&nbsp;sprovedeno u toku &scaron;kolske&nbsp;2012/13. &scaron;kolske godine. Kao&nbsp;merni instrument za merenje&nbsp;performansi kori&scaron;ćen je dvoslojni&nbsp;test znanja sa zadacima&nbsp;<br />vi&scaron;estrukog izbora, a svaki zadatakje praćen sedmostepenom skalom&nbsp;Likertovog tipa za samoprocenu&nbsp;uloženog mentalnog napora.&nbsp;</p><p>Dobijeni rezultati pokazuju da&nbsp;primenjena instrukciona strategija,&nbsp;koja se oslanja na primenu&nbsp;vi&scaron;estrukih nivoa reprezentacije&nbsp;znanja vodi povećanju učeničkih&nbsp;performansi, a istovremeno i&nbsp;smanjenju kognitivnog opterećenja.&nbsp;Rezultati dobijeni za procenu&nbsp;instrukcione efikasnosti sugeri&scaron;u&nbsp;da primenjeni model predstavlja&nbsp;efikasan nastavni model.</p><p>Dalje istraživanja performansi&nbsp;pokazala su da&nbsp; primenjena&nbsp;instrukciona strategija ima&nbsp;<br />podjednako pozitivan uticaj kako&nbsp;na performanse, tako i na&nbsp;procenjeni mentalni napor&nbsp;ispitanika oba pola. Ispitivana&nbsp;strategija takođe se pokazala&nbsp;efikasnom u obuci svih ispitivanih&nbsp;grupa učenika (najmanje uspe&scaron;nih,&nbsp;srednje uspe&scaron;nih i najuspe&scaron;nijih).&nbsp;<br />Pored toga&nbsp; rezultati&nbsp; su ukazali i na&nbsp;postojanje velikog broja&nbsp;miskoncepcija u K grupi ispitanika,&nbsp;dok su u E grupi, koja je&nbsp;učestvovala u eksperimentalnoj&nbsp;nastavi, veliki broj &nbsp;miskoncepcija&nbsp;bio eliminisan.</p><p>Na kraju, rezultati analize&nbsp;kognitivne kompleksnosti ukazali&nbsp;su na postojanje značajnih&nbsp;korelacija između svih ispitivanih&nbsp;parova varijabli (performanse-kognitivna kompleksnost;&nbsp;performanse-mentalni napor i&nbsp;mentalni napor-kognitivna&nbsp;kompleksnost).</p> / <p>The central goal of this disserta-tion&nbsp; was to examine the extent to&nbsp;which a teaching approach fo-cused on the interaction&nbsp; among&nbsp;macroscopic, submicroscopic and&nbsp;<br />symbolic levels of chemistry representations could affect high&nbsp;school students&rsquo; performance in&nbsp;the field of inorganic reactions, as&nbsp;well as to examine how the appli-ed &nbsp;instruction influences stu-dents&rsquo; assessment of invested&nbsp;mental effort.</p><p>The total sample of this research&nbsp;included 313 high school stu-dents. The survey was conducted&nbsp;in the 2012-2013 school year. As&nbsp;a measuring instrument for stu-dent &nbsp;performance a&nbsp; two-tier mu-ltiple-choice test&nbsp; of knowledge&nbsp;was used.&nbsp; Each task in the test&nbsp;was followed by a seven point&nbsp;Likert-type scale for evaluation of&nbsp;invested mental effort.&nbsp;</p><p>Obtained results indicate that a&nbsp;teaching strategy relying on the&nbsp;interplay between three levels of&nbsp;knowledge representation leads&nbsp;to an increase in students&rsquo; performance and also contributes to&nbsp;the reduction of cognitive load.&nbsp;The obtained results for calcula-ted mental efficiency suggest that&nbsp;the applied instructional model&nbsp;represents an effective teaching&nbsp;model. Further performance te-sting have shown that applied&nbsp;instructional strategy have simi-lar positive impact in terms of&nbsp;both performance and mental&nbsp;effort on the subjects of both&nbsp;genders. This strategy has also&nbsp;<br />proved to be effective in training&nbsp;all examined groups of students&nbsp;(low achievers, &nbsp;middle achievers&nbsp;and high achievers). In addition,&nbsp;results indicated the existence of&nbsp;a large number of misconceptions&nbsp;in the K group, while in the group&nbsp;E, that was subjected to experi-mental teaching, a great deal of&nbsp;misconceptions was eliminated.</p><p>Last but not least, the results of&nbsp;cognitive complexity analysis&nbsp;indicated the existence of signifi-cant correlations between all the&nbsp;examined pairs of variables (pe-rformance-cognitive complexity;&nbsp;performance-mental effort; me-ntal effort-cognitive complexity).</p>

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Past research found performance differences between monolingual and bilingual children in the domain of executive functions (EF). Furthermore, recent studies have reported advantages in processing efficiency or mental effort in bilingual adults and children. These studies mostly focused on the investigation of “cold” EF tasks. Studies including measures of “hot” EF, i.e., tasks operating in an emotionally significant setting, are limited and hence results are inconclusive. In the present study, we extend previous research by investigating performance in a task of the “hot” EF domain by both behavioral data and mental effort via pupillary changes during task performance. Seventy-three monolingual and bilingual school children (mean age = 107.23 months, SD = 10.26) solved the Iowa Gambling Task in two different conditions. In the standard task, characterized by constant gains and occasional losses, children did not learn to improve their decision-making behavior. In a reversed task version, characterized by constant losses and occasional gains, both monolinguals and bilinguals learned to improve their decision-making behavior over the course of the task. In both versions of the task, children switched choices more often after losses than after gains. Bilinguals switched their choices less often than monolinguals in the reversed task, indicating a slightly more mature decision-making strategy. Mental effort did not differ between monolinguals and bilinguals. Conclusions of these findings for the bilingual advantage assumption will be discussed.